I’ve discovered an amazing website that I want to share with you! The National Institute for Play (NIT) has resources that help you understand the importance of play in children’s brain development, mental health, and learning. There’s also plenty in there about how YOUR play in everyday life supports your mental health. I hope you’ll check it out. […]
We all need play in our lives. Yes, even you! It’s amazing to watch babies and children play. It comes so naturally to them, whereas it seems like we as adults completely forgot how to do it. Even though the way children play seems relatively simple, it’s actually developmental play. It’s how babies and young […]
Just like everything else when it comes to children, humor is developmental and amazingly enough, it starts really early in life. Babies laugh before they talk, which makes laughter one of the earliest hints on how they are experiencing the world. What’s funny to children changes with time, as their cognitive or intellectual development increases and that […]
How do you know when your child is ready to use the potty? 🤔 How do you teach them to do it? 😝 Should you give them rewards like m&m’s when they are successful? 🥳 What’s the best way to respond when they have an accident? 🤭 So many questions surround the simple task of learning […]
Do you like to DIY? I sure do! Especially when it involves the kitchen and kiddos. When I was a toddler teacher, we had a tray with all the ingredients for making playdough, measuring cups and spoons, and an old saucepan with a tattered recipe card in it. Whenever the time seemed right, we’d pull […]
Worry. It seems to come with the territory of parenting. We worry about… … whether we can break the unhealthy patterns from our own childhood.… if the isolation of a pandemic will affect our child.… how the uncertainty of today’s world will affect our child’s future. In today’s podcast episode, bestselling author Holly Elissa Bruno […]
Resilience, persistence and patience. These are characteristics we want children to develop so they’ll be able to manage the challenges of life. Seems kinda crazy but guess what, there are things you can do today to help children when they’re in third grade trying to figure out long division and playground politics. But how do […]
Have you experienced the joy of leaving your baby with a child care provider or sitter for the first time? What about the fear and uncertainty that comes with it? I remember it so well, and there were so many mixed emotions. I wanted (and needed) some personal space, but it seemed that every day, as soon […]
I love how predictable child development is. From learning to walk, talk, play with others, build with blocks, even the marks made on a page, we can predict what children will do next, as they grow towards autonomy and independence. In this video, I help you decipher what you see in children’s artwork, outlining the […]